


evenstar

by ssstrychnine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, POV Brienne of Tarth, Post-Canon Fix-It, but also post-the whole show however tf it turns out, post-episode 0804
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: some time after the war, jaime goes to tarth





	evenstar

On Tarth, the air gets thicker before it rains. It starts to smell of damp earth, like the dust from summer has already been pulled into the sky, and the sea changes too, darkening with the clouds. It is close to midday and Brienne is stepping her group of boys through their sword training, correcting their form with gentle taps from a wooden blade, when she notices the sky is growing bruised. The boys don't appear to have seen anything, but she sighs and tells them to pack up early and go home, and they complain loudly, but do as they are told and run off, jostling and yelling. She has been back for some months now, and it's strange, to step into a place so easily, after being gone for so long. She sighs again and starts to tidy up the rack of training swords, and is still doing that when a boy comes running back, dirty-faced and barefoot and smelling of the docks.  
  
"Ser," he says, bowing hastily. "Lady Brienne."  
  
"Good morning," she replies. She doesn't recognise him as one of her boys, but it might be that he's too young yet, or the group too big to pick him out.

"There's a ship come in," he says. "The Kingslayer's on it."

Brienne freezes for a moment, then licks her lips, shifts in place. Kingslayer could be used to describe any number of people in the Seven Kingdoms, these days, but somehow she knows who this one is.

"Jaime," she says, her voice half-choked. "Jaime Lannister."

"He's got no guard, he don't look like any lord I've seen." He wrinkles his nose and squints at Brienne, like he's reconsidering that last statement. "It's him though, he's only got one hand."

"Thank you for telling me," she says, and she digs into the purse at her belt for a coin to give the boy, and he tears off again, probably to stare at Jaime Lannister, down on the docks. A lord who no longer looks like one. She wipes her hands off on the thighs of her trousers and curses herself for sweating over a man who had only left, like all men do.

Unsure of what to do, she turns in place and wipes her hands again. She could go inside, have a table set with wine and cheese, he will have had a long journey. She could go inside and lock herself in her bedroom and refuse to come out until he's left. She could throw herself at him, kiss him, touch his face, beg him to stay again. She stays where she is. Surely it would be more comfortable to receive him in the training yard than anywhere else. Perhaps they can push through their disagreements with steel, just as they used to. Perhaps he has brought a wife with him. 

"Shut _up_ ," she mutters, to herself. "Be quiet." 

It starts to rain a moment later, heavy and sudden, like summer storms always are. She moves from the yard to the eaves of the stables, just out of the weather, and busies herself with horse tack and hay. Everything looks messier than it had a moment ago and she tells herself that it's because of the rain and not because she's anxious. The yard turns quickly to mud. Her hands shake as she hangs leather bridle on rack, and tugs them straight. 

"Brienne," comes a voice she knows almost as well as her own, and she turns so fast she almost stumbles.   
  
His hair is longer, greyer, and messy with salt and wind. He is dressed in soft wool and a quilted jacket, quartered grey and stormy blue, the right sleeve tucked and pinned over his stump. He has a sword at his waist, in a plain leather sheath, but nothing else to say that he's a knight, and no red or gold or lions, to say that he's a Lannister. He is soaking wet and seems not to notice the rain still falling. It is clear that he has walked here from the docks. Brienne finds she cannot speak.  
  
"Brienne," says Jaime, marching forward like he's being pulled on a string, and then dropping to his knees in the mud before her. The rain falls over his hair, his cheeks, his mouth. "Lady Tarth," he says.

Brienne stares at him, and struggles not to take a step backwards, further into shelter. She remembers kneeling in front of him, when he had knighted her at Winterfell, all that time ago. "What are you doing?" she hisses, finding her voice.  
  
"I would pledge myself to Tarth, to _you_ , and-"  
  
'Get up," she snaps, conscious of the stable hands and squires that are huddled in the stalls and watching. "Get out of the rain, you look like a fool."  
  
"I _am_ a fool," he says. "I left you and I didn't think of-"  
  
" _Jaime_." She hesitates before reaching down to grab his hand and pull him back with her, under the eaves. She lets go of him immediately. She wipes her wet hand on her sleeve and then curls her fingers into her palms, like that might stop the thought of touching him again.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says, blinking the rain from his eyes.  
  
"Not here," she mutters, and she turns on her heel and takes the stable door into the Evenfall cellars.  
  
It is a maze, the castle she grew up in, but she knows it like she knows no other place, like she knows the calluses on her palms or the steps you take when you first pick up a wooden sword. She walks through the cellars, and the armoury and the winter stores, tapping her palm against sacks of grains and flour, and Jaime follows her. Cold stone steps, passed servant's quarters and through the kitchens, picking up a square of linen, to wrap around a knife and cheese and bread and a small twist of paper, holding cold-kept quince paste, gritty with seeds, but sweet. She hands this linen parcel to Jaime and he takes it and he follows. Up further, through the hall of portraits, generations of Tarth lords laid out across the walls. Jaime pauses here, at the newest painting, of her in blue armour, her hand on the lion-headed hilt of a Valyrian steel sword.  
  
"The Evenstar," he says, quietly. "It suits you."  
  
"You're dripping," says Brienne. "Come on."  
  
There is a small room near the top of a tower, a solar with a stained glass window, showing the cliffs on the east side of the island, tall and white, and rays of high bright sun from the free cities. Brienne likes to sit there in the afternoons and write letters that she does not send, and then burn them over a candle. She takes him there now and the windows have been darkened by the rain, but the walls are still stained in watery colour.  
  
There is a cushioned bench in the room, and a table with ink and paper and a flagon of wine and one cup. She sits down, takes the wine and fills the cup and drinks deeply, before passing it to Jaime. He puts down his linen parcel so he can take it, and he sits next to her, and water drips from his hair and his clothing and his boots.  
  
"You look drowned," says Brienne, quietly. "Do you have dry clothing?"  
  
"Everything I own is on the ship that brought me here," he says. "It can be brought up shortly, if you allow me to stay."  
  
Brienne takes the cup back off him, and fills it, and empties it, and fills it again. Outside the rain is getting heavier, drumming against the windows like stones. There are puddles forming at Jaime's feet.  
  
They eat the food they'd brought from the kitchens and finish the flagon of wine between them and Brienne feels numb and tired and unmoored. She imagines the rain has flooded the island, and they're in the only place left, high above it all. Jaime drips. Brienne sighs.  
  
"Sansa didn't tell me you were coming," she says, finally. "I thought you returned to Winterfell."  
  
"I did," acknowledges Jaime. "And Lady Stark told me your father had died and she had given you leave to begin your duties as the Evenstar."  
  
"Stop calling me that," mutters Brienne. Her father was the Evenstar, she is just...  a last resort.  
  
"I'm sorry about your father," he says. "I wish I could have been there for you."  
  
"You could have," she snaps. "If you had stayed, you would have been with me for... for all of it."  
  
"I'm sorry," says Jaime, for the second time. His hand is a fist, resting on his knee, and his shoulders are rigid. "I had no choice."  
  
"Fuck that," Brienne snarls, turning to him finally. "You chose to keep me in the dark, after... after-."  
  
"It wasn't... it was nothing to do with you," he says, softly, pleading.  
  
"It doesn't matter." She sighs, tugs at the cuffs of her sleeves so they fall straight, so the buttons rest against the knobs of bone at her wrists. "You... you made it about me, by coming to my room and telling me you would stay. It was cruelty, to do that and then leave anyway."  
  
Jaime is silent. He looks exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed and hollows at his cheeks. He looks like he had when he left her. She'd gone over that night in her head so many times it was burned there. Iron-grey Winterfell and the dirty snow and his face in her hands and the cold. Almost a year ago now.  
  
"I could not think of a world where I deserved you," he says, finally, his voice rough.  
  
"And you deserve me even less, now," she mutters, feeling reckless. Her cheeks are warm with wine and anger, but she can't hate him, try as she might. She picks up the empty wine cup so she can hold it pressed between her palms. She watches Jaime's hand, the way he pulls at the folded sleeve of the opposite arm, or pushes his wet hair back from his face.  
  
"You're right," he says, sounding defeated. "I only came to... to see you again. I am grateful that you've given me that."  
  
Brienne presses her lips together and puts the cup back on the table. Holding her breath, she reaches across the space between them and touches his wrist. It's just a touch, but he startles, and looks up at her with such hope she pulls away immediately.  
  
"You can stay," she says, standing up abruptly. "For as long as you'd like."  
  
They leave the solar together and she takes him to another set of rooms, near hers but not next to them, and tells him they are his. He is gracious and polite and he bows to her before she leaves him. His belongings have arrived, a chest of clothing, armour, and nothing more, and she has them sent up to him. It's stopped raining, not a storm after all, and the sun is coming through the windows like it was never gone. With instructions left with the servant', to take him dinner in the evening, Brienne leaves the castle.

There is a path behind Evenfall Hall, that runs around the cliffs to a waterfall and a pool, and has been worn smooth by hundreds of years of bare-footed children, itching to jump from the rocks. Brienne goes there now, picking her way around the wet rocks, her hands easily finding all those half-remembered handholds that she'd always used, when the path became too steep. The pool is deep and clear and the waterfall, a two-tiered shelf, fringed with thin-limbed trees that cling to the sides of the rocks. It roars with the new rainfall.

Brienne unlaces her boots and kicks them off and walks in the shallows. She knows a little of what happened to end the war. Jaime had known some secret of Cersei's and had broken into the Red Keep. Cersei had died and so had Euron Greyjoy, in a golden room, and Jaime Lannister had opened the gates and let Daenery's army in, and afterwards he'd been allowed to go to Winterfell. She does not know if he killed his sister, but she hopes it hadn't fallen to him, after everything.

She takes off her trousers then, and her shirt and underthings, and throws them onto the wet grass, and wades into deep water. She dives under, when it's deep enough, and the sound of the waterfall fills her ears until she can't think of anything else. She comes up for air, floats in place, kicking gently. She's always been at home in water, a good swimmer since she was a kid, big and broad-shouldered even then. She pushes her hair out of her face and lies back and closes her eyes and floats.

When twilight falls, and the water loses all the warmth of the day, she gets out. She wrings out her hair and pulls her clothes on, not caring about the wet. She climbs back down to her castle, and she goes to Jaime's rooms. 

He opens the door quickly and steps aside when he sees that it's her. He has a fire going and she stands in front of that first, hand held over the flames, to warm herself after the water. When she is drier, more comfortable, she turns to him. 

"Why are you here?" she asks, because that's the only thing that matters now. They have both been wounded by a war that has been over for almost a year, and it is time for healing.

"I love you," he says, like it's the easiest thing in the world. "I want to be with you." 

"Alright." Her voice breaks over the words and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. "Come here then."

He crosses the room and takes her offered hand and she slips her arms around his neck and he puts his around her waist, and he smells like the rain, earthy and damp, but not unpleasant. He smells like Tarth, she thinks, and she holds him closer. A summer storm. She pulls away then, but only to kiss him, close-mouthed and as gentle as she feels, safe in the knowledge that he came back to her. She doesn't think it will be easy, there is more they have to talk about, but for now she is just glad. She kisses him again, and he touches her cheek, and she thinks of the first time he came to her, drunk and golden, and she thinks that she likes him better here, damp with rain and soft with love.

"I love you," she tells him, gravely, and he sighs and smiles and pulls her back to him.

Later, in her bed, she lies awake until the rain starts again, loud and fierce against her windows, and then she turns to Jaime, sleeping beside her, and kisses his bare shoulder, and shuts her eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for the prompt "rain" on tumblr and idk how every time i end up writing one of them knocking on the other's door in the evening. o well. wasn't that episode... something? bits of it were very sweet and bits of it were kind of terrible but. you know how it is w that show. i actually watched their scenes though! first time i've watched any part of it in... forever. but yeah i've been waiting for this for eight years or something ridiculous. and it happened... wrong, but it happened. i don't know how to feel. but i hope this... fixes some things anyway.
> 
> for anyone who doesn't know, evenstar is the title of the lords (and lady) of tarth, i can't remember if that's in the show at all. 
> 
> thank you for reading! lmk what you think!


End file.
